Lt Col RJ Rhoderick-Jones
According to some Africans, the Pangolin is a symbol of peace. According to others, it’s a busy little animal that, at the approach of any kind of danger, wraps itself up into a ball and waves its legs in the air.
The Pangolin was chosen as the emblem of the Commonwealth Monitoring Force, Rhodesia. The operation in which we are engaged is called Agila by the Commonwealth and Honey Badger by the Rhodesian Government. The Patriotic Front, too, has their words for it but neither my Shona nor my Ndebele is up to a translation.
As I begin to write I am painfully aware that you who are reading it have the advantage. It is now the 24th of January and I am on a virtually empty VC10 flying out of Salisbury en route to England where I am to spend five days gathering in Regimental affairs before returning to Rhodesia. We are thus less than halfway through our duties as Monitors, and the future; the election, the post-election period all is speculation.
You will by now, know the outcome as I cannot. At four o’clock in the afternoon of November, 7th 1979, my telephone in Tidworth rang and I was told that the Garrison Commander wished to see me. This was odd because he is not my operational commander and matters of Garrison welfare, litter, dustbins and so on had been dealt with that morning. That night was a Guest Night in the Mess and the Garrison Commander was coming to it. What did he want? It didn’t take long for him to tell me. Inside a week, he said, I was to be in Rhodesia. My job, in common with four other Commanding Officers of Regiments in the United Kingdom, was to monitor the Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF) during a ceasefire period.
Additionally, I was to coordinate in my Joint Operational Command (JOC) the monitor effort which was to be devoted to the Patriotic Front. I would have two other Lieutenant Colonels to do this, one with the ZANLA (Mugabe) and one with ZIPRA (Nkomo). My force initially would be about 350 strong, half of them Australian, and this would reduce as time went on. Any questions? How many Irish Hussars could I take with me? About 25. Is that all? Yes, because no Regiment was to be so decimated that any of its planned training or operational activity was to stop.
In the event, because of the comings and goings at Lancaster House, the weeks passed and it was eventually December 19th, before I stepped out of the VC10 at Salisbury to be met by General John Acland and that same Garrison Commander, Brigadier John Learmont — now Commander Commonwealth Monitoring Group (CMG). The rest of the Irish Hussars followed soon afterwards, the last party arriving on Christmas Day. Not that we knew it was Christmas Day because we were too busy assimilating briefings and deploying into the bush.
My JOC is called Hurricane. It is the largest, being 450 km by 250km from Kariba in the West to Mozambique in the East and is all of Rhodesia North of Salisbury. It is also in terms of incidents the nastiest, and the war started here. The JOC is based on Rhodesia’s 2nd Brigade and is divided up into five sub-JOCs — three of them commanded by the senior policeman in the area and two by the senior soldier. Eight RSF companies operate in the JOC together with the Auxiliaries (SFA), Police (BSAP), Rhodesian Air Force (RhAF), Special Forces and various sorts of Home Affairs and Farm Militias.
The whole country is armed and war has been fought for 14 years in Hurricane. For the Patriotic Front, there are six Assembly Places in my area, four (A, B, C, D) for ZANLA and two (P, R) for ZIPRA. During the first week of the Ceasefire when the Patriotic Front was coming in, each Assembly Place was fed by one or more RVs. The Irish Hussars were deployed as follows:
- JOC Hurricane — five (Colonel, Capt Comyn, Sgt Black, LCpl Janik, LCpl March).
- Sub JOC Kariba — three (Capt Carew, Cpl Ryan, Cpl Cummings).
- Four Company Base Teams — eight (WO2 Nunn, SSgt Cordeiro, Sgt Britt, Sgt McMullan, LCpl James, LCpl Palmer, LCpl Hill, LCpl Trust).
- One RV Team — nine (Capt Bellamy, SSgt Currie, Cpl L’Estrange, Cpl Gregory, LCpls Boyle, Johnston, Lambert, Burne, Steadman).
After the RVs closed on 6th January, the RV team new home, leaving Captain Bellamy (who went to work at PFHQ in Salisbury) and LCpl Johnston who replaced LCpl James (needed to box for the Regiment). At a later date, Cpl Foxhall replaced LCpl Hill who had to be relieved for compassionate reasons.
My other four Sub JOCs are Australian and I have nothing but praise for their ability, good humour and loyalty to me, their temporary Pommie Commanding Officer. One of them is from 3 RAR which most of you will know is affiliated with us.
The job definitions are relatively simple. For RSF monitors, it is to watch and report on the activities of the RSF with a view to reporting breaches of the Ceasefire. For the PF monitors it is to run the Assembly Areas and report similarly, particularly on individuals or groups leaving the Assembly Places, which is an illegal activity. The actual job of course is vastly different and much more complicated. Success such as it is, is achieved by getting to know those whom you are monitoring, extremely well. To gain their trust and be privy to their plans is essential for effective monitoring. One row, one loose word, can undo in a minute all that others have achieved in weeks.
Both sides are sensitive, both hate and distrust each other and the tightrope is narrow in the extreme. The duties of RSF and PF monitors frequently overlap. Both become involved in investigating alleged breaches of the ceasefire. One Australian subaltern of mine has done 13 such investigations already, involving much travel, some on mined roads and hours of patient questioning and writing up.
We are all conscious of the uniqueness of what we are doing. There are no precedents and no textbooks. We follow our noses and correct, in our own way, our own mistakes. The ever-present media men and women remind us constantly that one major error at even our low level could jeopardise the whole thing and most awesome of all, none of us knows what will happen next. Can we keep the ceasefire until the election? Despite growing unrest in the Assembly Areas caused by boredom, and by the hemmed-in feeling that the PF are subject to, despite the minor incidents (and a minor incident usually includes at least one death), outside the Assembly Places caused by the estimated 1000 PF in Hurricane who has not come in or by the SFA; despite the anxiety of the RSF to ring the Assembly Places as closely as possible; despite all this, we think we can.
But what then? Who will win the election? If it is the Bishop with or without PF (ZIPRA), what of ZANLA? Will they go back into the bush? And if they do will Mozambique continue to provide refuge? What if ZANLA wins with or without PF (ZIPRA)? Will the Europeans all have to leave? Will the RSF allow such a result? Will South Africa intervene? Will we have a Kenya, or a Zambia or a Mozambique?
All these questions matter to us and by now you and I will know the answers and our fate will be decided accordingly.
Our life here then is busy. Busier soldiering than I can ever remember because we are never off duty and won’t be so except for the few days R and R planned for us in Kariba or Victoria Falls. But we are, as is so often the way, happy in our work. We are doing a job and even our severest Rhodesian critics continually praise us in that doing. We are a little bit of history and that is always gratifying. Above all, those of us with the RSF have been made to feel welcome and people are astoundingly kind and generous to us. Those of us with the PF are suspicious and tension is always present. The name of the game is to do the job calmly without favour and to try and do so without fear too. But 40 men are not many against 2,000 and those, if things went wrong, represent the odds in an Assembly Place.
Whatever happens here, I am proud to have taken part, proud to have been a member of a genuine Commonwealth Force, proud of our part in trying to help Rhodesia, and above all proud of the way in which the men under my command, Irish Hussars, other British soldiers, Australians and New Zealanders are doing their job.
QRIH Journal 1980
